Adapting a 'Main Street' Concept to a West African City: The Social, Economic, and Cultural factors of Kpone, Ghana

摘要

In the past decades there have continued to be population growth and urbanization in a small city like Kpone, in Accra, Ghana. Kpone's "Main Street", have deteriorated to a point that it immediately needed bottom up revitalization. Therefore in my opinion, the Commercial Store-Front typology, being part and parcel of "Main Street", will be of no hindrance to the cultural structure and values of the people of this small city, but rather reinforce the cultural structure and values, accelerate development and modernization, while merging the different cultural ideas of people from different backgrounds who are coming to populate the city. It will create prosperity, efficiency, and sustainability. This goal can be achieved very easily in my opinion, through educating the people as to the benefits of modernization and development, by holding Town-Hall meetings and seminars with the town folks and explaining the initiative. In addition, presenting a detailed plan to the mayor's office and council members will quickly alleviate the fear of a new initiative that may impact the community positively or negatively.;Under the aforementioned circumstances, I will use this project to demonstrate how a foreign idea can be imported and accepted by a people if done in the right way. The right way, in my view is allowing the project to be a community led planning in which professionals, developers, and the local community create a partnership to achieve these aims. Partnership and collaboration will bring trust and understanding. Under no circumstance will the Main Street revitalization be imposed on the people of Kpone, but rather they themselves will have the opportunity to choose or even design their type of "Main Street" comprising the commercial Store-front.;The stakeholders comprises the local community, tourism, private sector businesses, government, and nongovernmental organizations. The type and scale of development will depend on many factors unique to the area and the people. While very important in projects of this magnitude, I will not cover the funding and city Code aspects here in this project, albeit mention them briefly when necessary.